


No Rest for the Automotive

by Feneris



Category: Gravity Falls, Transcendence AU - Fandom
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Cars, Demolition Derbies, Gen, Murder with Cars, Sentient Cars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-24 06:21:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7497429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feneris/pseuds/Feneris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the battered old car had mysteriously appeared in the parking lot of his garage, Jacob had thought of his nephew Kelly.</p><p>Kelly for his part, was overjoyed at the prospect of getting his own car. Even if it was a beat up pile of scrap of mysterious origin and mysterious enchantment. It was magical, he knew that. Only magic could have been keeping it together. </p><p>He just had no idea what kind of magic was powering that car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically the story of the Car after David and Sarah. Basically it jumps from owner to owner over the centuries until it finds a way to transcend its rusty frame. (But that is a story for another time.)
> 
> Done with help from ThisCat. Thanks again!

Kelly didn’t know where the car had come from. It had appeared in the back lot of his uncle Jacob’s repair garage one day with no warning or explanation. 

The car wasn’t a pretty sight. At one point it had probably been a handsome Oyama Worldwalker. However, whomever had owned it before had beat the shit out of it. You would have been lucky to find an inch of space on that car that didn’t have a dent in it. In some cases, the dents had dents of their own. Rust crept over the sides like some kind of noxious skin disease. A large brass statue in the shape of a weird bird had been wielded to the front grill, and it looked like someone had carved a runic incantation that said “start shithead” into the side of the car with a chisel. When his uncle Jacob had first started it up, the car had sounded like a zombie being fed into a gravel crusher. 

His uncle Jacob had waited the required three days for anyone to show up to claim the car, before claiming it himself as an abandoned vehicle. Jacob had then called Kelly up and asked if he wanted a car. 

Like many teenagers, Kelly had wanted a car of his own. He was fascinated with engineering, magitech, and especially automobiles. He had frequently asked his uncle to show him how to fix cars, and personally craved the freedom having his own car would give him. The way his uncle Jacob figured it, there was nothing better than a beat up all car to learn mechanicing on, and if his nephew got a car out of the deal, which him and his mom could otherwise never afford, than all the better. 

The interior was… better than the exterior suggested. Yes, there was a magical array carved into the dashboard, and smoke stains on the ceiling suggesting someone had been lighting candles in the car. Sure the upholstery had a few sewn up slashes that looked like they came from claws. Sure someone had hacked out a large section of the gearshift console and relabeled all the gears. And yes there were suspicious red stains all over the floor. The radio was only capable of picking up four station: static, weird static, the 24hr epic music, and a community radio station from a tiny town out in the desert. But it wasn’t a burnt out husk so Kelly was happy. 

When they tried to open the hood however, they hit several snags. The first, was that when Kelly had pulled the hood release, there had been a loud bang from inside the car, and a giant cloud of inky black smoke had shot out of the tailpipe. The second was when they had tried to find the manual latch and discovered it had been smashed beyond repair by one of the collisions that had dented the front. After fiddling around with a knife for a half an hour they finally managed to pull back the latch, and then the hood just refused to open. They couldn’t get it to budge an inch. Not even when they had jammed a crowbar under the hood and pushed with all their might. 

So, they had reasoned, if they couldn’t get things from above, they just had to go below. So they had driven the car up onto the hoist and got their first good look at the internal components.

“I don’t know what it is, but that is not an engine.” Uncle Jacob had declared, shining his shop light up into the car. 

Kelly agreed. Wood, obsidian, and animal bones were not the choice material for making engines. It wasn’t the only thing. The drive shaft had been completely disconnected. Which was really strange because the car had apparently been driving just fine without it. The brakes had been worn smooth, which was kind of weird because as far as either of them had been able to tell, the car had braked just fine. When they had taken the cap off to check the oil, all that had come out was a thick sludge that was as black as the void. 

His uncle Jacob had been optimistic however. He was willing to put the time and money into helping his nephew fix up the car, provided Kelly was willing to put in the effort and dedication.

Sure they would never restore the car to its pristine condition, but they could at least get a few more years of teaching out of it.

\---

It turned out that his uncle may have been a tad too optimistic about their ability to fix the car. There was magic in the car, a lot of it. Whomever had owned the car before had clearly known a lot about magic, and had woven wards and spells into the car into a tight tapestry of enchantment. Replacing the car’s transmission had been slightly less complicated than open heart surgery. Requiring them to simultaneously transfer the enchantments from the old transmission to the new one, while they were sliding the new one in. (Kelly could swear the car had been growling at them the whole time.) 

Yet it was also apparent that whomever had owned the car, had cared very little about the state of the car itself. When they had opened up the gear box to take a look, they had found gears that had been ground smooth and a lot of dry sand. It was much the same when they checked the wheel bearings. The more they looked the more broken things they kept finding that looked like they had never even been noticed by the previous owners. They hadn’t bothered to fix anything, just slapped on another enchantment to keep the car going. There were wires that had been cut, components that had been smashed beyond recognition, and pieces that were outright missing.

The good news was however, that with the car in the state it was, every little repair was a major improvement. It took a lot of work, but eventually Jacob pronounced the car “okay” to take on the road. It had been a major source of pride for him when he started the engine and the car no longer sounded like a zombie being fed into a gravel crusher. (Now it just sounded like a regular zombie horde.) Fresh new tires, new brakes, a reconnected drive shaft and wheel bearings that didn’t have sand in them, made a world of difference to the way the car ran. 

Kelly had been so excited he had driven two loops around town in the car, then spent nearly all afternoon washing the car and cleaning out the interior. With the car being in the state it was in, it didn’t noticeable improve its appearance. But that wasn’t really why Kelly was doing it. 

He had a car, and he was going to take damn good care of it. 

\---

Kelly’s enthusiasm was soon dampened however by the news that his dad had been sighted in the next town over.

Kelly did not have many fond memories of his dad. The few he did had a distinctly bitter tinge when held up against the majority of his experiences with his father. From everything he had heard and experienced, his dad had a short temper, a propensity for violence, and a history of blatantly ignoring restraining orders. Kelly and his mom had moved three times in five years in a desperate attempt to escape the man, who seemed to regard three custody battles and a messy divorce as if they had never happened. 

It could have been a complete coincidence, but his dad being sighted in the next town over brought a world of worry down on him. Since he didn’t have a dog, or any pet for that matter, to speak his woes to, he ended up telling them to the car. 

“I hope it’s not him,” he said, as washed the car with a soapy rag, being careful to avoid snagging his cloth on the rust patches. “Every time he shows up my mom always ends up going to the hospital because he hits her, and she puts up with it because if he hits her, he’s not hitting me. And she always tells me to hide, even though she knows dad will beat her when he can’t find me. Then we have to pack up and move while the cops have him arrested, and social services find us a new place to live. Then she has to find a new job, I have to make new friends, and then he shows up again and…” His head thudded against the dented hood of the car. “I wish he was dead. Well, not necessarily dead, just gone forever. So mom can stop being afraid and we can stop moving.” He took a long deep breath, pushed himself up, and began soaping the car. “I hope it’s not him. I hope he never shows up here ever.”

That hope turned out to be futile.

It was just after dinner, while Kelly and his mom were washing up the dishes, when they heard a familiar grumble of an old truck making its way up their road. 

“Kelly,” his mom hissed to him. “Hide.”

Kelly scrambled up the stairs to his room, fear already penetrating his mind. Sixteen years, and his dad still scared him like nothing else. He quickly crawled under his bed. For whatever reason, his dad had never thought to look for him there. Just in case however, he quickly shifted some of the stuff he had hidden under the bed to block the sight of anyone checking under. Just in time too. He heard the loud sounds of his dad pounding on the door. 

“Cathy! I know you’re in there! Open the goddamn door!”

“Piss off Howard!” he heard his mom screamed back, bravado hiding her fear. “I’ve called the police! You know you’re not allowed within a hundred miles of me!” 

“Open the fucking door Cathy!” 

Kelly could hear his dad stomp around to the other side of the house to pound on the back door. 

“Let me in you stupid bitch!” 

“Fuck off!” His mom screamed back. 

He could hear his dad stomp around the house, trying to find some door or window that his mom had forgotten to lock. Kelly could hear his dad swear loudly as he found every door and window locked and barred. No breaking he way in through a sliding glass patio door this time. 

After what seemed like an eternity, his dad finally let out one final scream of frustration and stormed off to his truck. No doubt intent on finding a sledgehammer or axe to try and break down the door with. He heard his dad slam the door of his truck shut, and the whir and whine of the engine as it refused to start. His dad let out another flurry of swear words and slammed the truck door again. Then a familiar sound, reminiscent of a zombie horde, filled the night and Kelly’s heart sunk.

He had left the keys in the ignition of his car. He had to, since they were fused with the ignition switch. But he hadn’t considered it a problem because no one in their right mind would have stolen his car. His dad on the other hand…

Kelly waited until the noise of the car had faded completely, before crawling out from under the bed and carefully making his way downstairs. His worst fears were confirmed when he looked out the window and saw only he’s dad’s beat up truck in the driveway. 

“Kelly, I’m sorry,” his mom said, coming up beside him. “But I think your dad stole your car.”

\---

Thankfully the next car to come up their road was the police, responding to the 911 call Kelly’s mom had placed. A patrol car and two officers stayed with them all night, until the police managed to track down Kelly’s dad.

They found him sometime after midnight; facedown in the middle of a cow pasture, tire marks all over his body, and not a spark of life left in him. It was no mystery what had happened. A trail of destruction marked where someone had chased the man off the road, through a thicket and a barbed wire fence, and out into the cow pasture. Where they had run over him several times. Even going so far as to spin a donut on his corpse. 

The car was pulled out of a nearby pond the next morning. Aside from the dead beaver wedged in its grill, it was in no worse shape than it was when Kelly first drove it out of his uncle’s garage. The cops went over it with a fine toothed comb, before deciding that there wasn’t any evidence connecting it to the death of Kelly’s dad, and giving it back to Kelly. 

For Kelly, it was like the greatest of weights had been lifted off his back. A great weight he had been carrying for so long he had forgotten what it was like to be without it. His dad was gone. No more having to move because he had tracked them down. No more hiding under the bed when he heard a truck coming. No more visits to the emergency trauma room for his mom and meetings with social workers and police. It was done. Over. At long last. 

The cops weren’t quite sure what had happened, to leave Kelly’s dad dead in a cow pasture and his car in a pond. Kelly for his part, didn’t particularly care. He, against all expectations, had gotten the car back and his dad was out of his life forever. The only thing he was really sure of, was that if he ever met the person who finally took his dad out of his life, he would personally thank them. 

\---

While the death of his dad took away many of the stresses that had plagued Kelly’s life, it wasn’t the end of all his problems. However, those problems at least were more in line with those faced by teenagers everywhere. Fitting in, finding your place in the world, and dealing with the opinions of your peers. 

For Kelly however, there was Max. Kelly didn’t know what exactly Max had against him. For all he knew, Max had simply decided that Kelly was a good target to torment. In any case, Max was always ready with some kind of taunt or cruel joke for whenever Kelly got within earshot. For the most part Kelly could just ignore him. He had circle of friends, small as it was, and he knew that most of what Max called him was just attempts to get under his skin. And really, when compared to his dad, Max was nothing more than an annoyance. 

That didn’t mean however, that Max’s taunts were always ineffective. Sometimes a particular jab hurt more than Kelly let on, though he was always careful to keep indifferent about it, so that Max could not be encouraged to use it again. It was barely a month after his dad died however, that Max finally said something that punched its way straight through Kelly’s self-control. 

“Hey Kelly! Still driving that moving junk heap? Can’t call it a car after all! Might as well drive to school in a little pink tricycle for all that pile of scrap probably drives! Heck, might as well put it in the demolition derby, set it in the ring for the monster trucks to crush!”

Kelly saw red. Looking back on things, he couldn’t say exactly what about that comment made him so mad. When he really thought about it he supposed it was the fact that he was actually really proud of all the work he had done on the car. Yes, the car was a wreck on wheels, but it ran well and it had never once failed him. He had worked hard on it, and no one likes their hard work being belittled by anyone. Even someone whose opinion they cared nothing for. In any case, he had spun around and charged straight up to Max. 

“Listen here,” he had snarled. “My car is just as good as that overpriced piece of shit truck you drive. In fact, lets prove it. The demolition derby is Saturday, right? Let’s both enter, me in my car, you in your stupid jacked-up truck. Let’s see who lasts longest then.” 

Max grinned back. Whether with real or feigned bravado, Kelly couldn’t tell. “Alright freak. See you Saturday. If you don’t chicken out that is.” 

Kelly just spun around and stalked off to rejoin his friends without another word.

\---

“What the hell was I thinking!?” Kelly’s head thudded against the hood of the car. “Even assuming I can outlast Max in the demolition derby, I’m going to wreck my car in the process.” 

He lifted his head to look at the car. It didn’t look any better than it had when he had first seen it, but only him and his uncle Jacob knew the sheer number of hours they had both put in to fixing it. New brakes, new tires, a whole new transmission. It had taken dozens and dozens of hours to get everything in the car fixed up. At least everything they could access without popping the hood, which still refused to budge no matter how hard him and his uncle tried. And now he was going to smash it all to shit on some stupid teenage dare. 

He supposed he could simply back out. But he had stupidly been the one to issue the challenge, and the thought of Max’s smug satisfaction got his blood boiling so badly that he could never bring himself to back down. 

“I’m sorry,” he sighed to the car. “You survived… whatever it was that happened to you before my uncle got hold of you, and now you’re going to get smashed to hell in a demolition derby on a stupid challenge. Gods I’m an idiot.” He let out another long sigh. “And I never did get to look under your hood. I’ve always wondered what you’ve got under there that’s so secret that…”

The hood suddenly popped open. 

Kelly stared in stunned astonishment. Carefully, almost reverently, he opened the hood the rest of the way, and stared down at a horse’s skull where the engine should be. He had always known the car had magic in it. There had been those times when he had taken a curve too fast or not given himself enough space to brake, when the car had seemed to take control and carry them both through the situation unscathed. But this was the solid proof as to just how magical it was. Kelly let out a whistle. 

“Those are some powerful wards,” he muttered. “Those look like they could keep out a high demon.”

That wasn’t all. While he could barely make sense of the tangled enchantments that ran all over the car, the sheer magical energy emanating from the engine compartment was making his teeth tingle.

It was also the final proof to his suspicion that whomever had enchanted the car, had no idea how cars actually worked. Most of the enchantments look like they had been slapped on as quick roadside repairs, and only harmonized with the rest of the enchantments when they started to interfere with each other. An array craved into the underside of the hood simultaneously called upon the great natural powers of the world, invoked various nuances of “eternal” in five different languages, and promised terrible and horrific punishment on the car if it didn’t start when the key was turned. 

It was far beyond his abilities to recreate the complex enchantment on the “engine.” But from what he could tell, the whole thing worked by basically yanking the car forward, like an ox attached to a cart. Which explained a lot of the damage to the drive train him and his uncle had observed when they had replaced the transmission and the rear differential. 

But it was also something he could fix. While he left the main body of the enchantment untouched, a bit of reworking on the array allowed him to redirect a lot of the energy, so that instead of pulling the car, it turned the driveshaft instead, much like an engine would do, if that car had one. Which in turn meant it would be working with the mechanics of the car instead of against them. He stayed up until midnight, working with his shop-light, harmonizing the myriad of enchantments and making them work with the mechanical aspects of the car. It wasn’t an easy task. The slapdash nature of the whole enchantment meant that some things couldn’t be changed without re-enchanting the whole car, but he did what he could. Every little thing helped, and the more things that were working together instead of against each other, meant an improvement to the whole car, one way or the other. 

“Done,” he proclaimed, slamming the hood shut. “That should all work a lot better now. You know, those wards you got are really powerful. We may actually have a chance at this.”

\---

“We are so fucked.” 

The Sunset Lake No-Holds-Barred Annual Demolition Derby, was not exactly the lawless free for all the name implied. There were some rules. Chief among them being a ban on ranged weapons and flamethrowers, and of course, deliberately targeting or killing drivers. But beyond that, there were no limits to the kinds of vehicles you could enter into the derby. Almost anything went from magic to mechanics. You could even enter a golf cart if you so wanted, provided you were either crazy or modified the hell out of it. 

As it was, there was a motley assortment of battered cars, a few monster trucks, three modified delivery vans, a logging truck with a battering ram attached to its front and monster truck tired on the back, five beefed-up tractors, one with a battering ram, a forklift that looked like it came out of a Mad Max movie, and a monster of a custom car called the War Ring, which appeared to be a combination of a military tank and a combine harvester. 

Kelly stared at the motley collection of vehicles, his competition for tonight, in abject horror.

“Just remember,” his friend Janet said into his earpiece. “You don’t need to win this. You just have to outlast Max, then you can pull into the forfeit bay and withdraw. If you stay away from the big guys, you might be able to get away without too much damage.”

“We are so fucked,” Kelly repeated. 

Max revved the engine of his shiny new pickup truck and shot Kelly a sadistic grin. The truck was at least twice the size of Kelly’s car, and Max had made sure to add some armor plating and a large set of spikes in the front. It wouldn’t last long against some of the larger competitors, but as Janet had pointed out, he didn’t need to actually win the thing. Just smash Kelly and his car into shrapnel. 

“We’re screwed.”

“Just keep yourself together,” Janet encouraged him. “Max isn’t any better off then you. No matter what happens, I guarantee that shiny pickup of his isn’t going to be very shiny by the time the derby is over.”

Kelly swallowed nervously as the lights counted down and the assembled motorists gunned their engines. A tense silence fell over the arena. Orange… Yellow… Green!

“GO!” The announcer roared. Every car in the arena shot forward.

Kelly froze up in panic. 

The Car did not.

The gas pedal jumped out from under his foot and the steering wheel wrenched itself from his grasp. The Car torn across the arena with an eldritch scream, ripped through the dirt with a spray of mud ten feet tall. A matching scream tore itself out of Kelly’s throat as The Car headed straight for a head on collision with Max’s pickup truck. 

The brass idol welded to the grill it up like a beacon, glowing with blue light. Then they rammed straight into the front of Max’s gigantic black pickup truck. 

Only, they didn’t exactly ram into it. All Kelly saw was a long blue line of energy burst from the idol. 

Max’s car was sheared clean in half. Straight down the middle, with both halves parting like the red sea before Mosses. The car drove straight on through as bits of shrapnel rained down across the windshield, and the two halves of the truck fell to the ground with identical thuds. 

Kelly caught a glimpse of Max’s face as he passed by. The sheer look of stupefied astonishment and sheer disbelieving terror was something he would savor for decades later. He would have liked to have made a witty remark to Max. Some verbal cherry to add on top of his victory. 

Unfortunately, he was too busy screaming. The car for its part, when off in search of bigger prey.

\---

“Holy fuck guys,” Kelly’s friend, Anders, whispered. “I didn’t think Kelly had it in him. He’s butchering them!” 

“You and me both,” Janet replied, cranking down the volume on the radio transmitter as another round of screaming echoed across the channel. “Gods can he scream.”

“I don’t what he did to that car of his,” their other friend, George added, peering at the carnage with a pair of binoculars. “But that thing is really taking a beating. It’s dishing out as good as it is getting though. I thought that thing would explode in a cloud of rust the moment it got one good hit but no its… SHIT he’s going after one of the monster trucks!” 

An explosion echoed from the arena, and the group just managed to scramble out of the way of a gigantic flaming tire which rolled past them.

“I hope we never see what happens when he gets road rage,” Anders muttered as the three of them watched the flaming tire roll off into the night. 

\---

Kelly was still screaming. His knuckles were white against the steering wheel as he held on for dear life. The Car was alive. This wasn’t just a slight correction to his steering to get around a tricky corner, or a bit extra brake to make sure they stopped in time. The Car was in complete control of its actions and seemed to have no need of any input from Kelly whatsoever. The wheel moved on its own, with only Kelly’s white knuckled grip giving the illusion he was actually doing anything. 

The Car was seemingly impervious to everything that was thrown at it. Trucks, three times its size, had rammed into it with all their might and had done nothing more than set The Car slightly off course. The Car for its part, returned the favor by attacking back with vicious ferocity. It had already gutted one of the delivery vans, flipped one of the tractors, and was currently ripping the sides off a modified motorhome with its back driver’s door. 

If there was one thing good that could be said about whomever had created The Car, it was that they had made it to survive anything. 

The logging truck came out of nowhere, completely blindsiding them. It rammed into The Car at top speed, putting all the momentum its large size could generate behind it. The Car went flying. Spinning top over bottom across the ground and coming to rest on its roof. 

Kelly pulled the hood release just as the logging truck charged forward to finish them off. A thick black cloud of smoke shot out of the tail-pipe, and Kelly let out a shaky sigh of relief as the logging truck thundered past, missing them by a meter. 

“We’re finished,” Kelly whispered. Even though he was upside down, he was still sitting in his seat. Whomever had created the car had evidently been concerned about crashing, and had put an array of momentum dampeners and magical harnesses around the seats. This had prevented Kelly from being tossed about like a ragdoll, and had probably saved him from whiplash and other injuries. Still, they couldn’t do much while they were upside down, and he could already see the logging truck lining up for another shot at them. 

It was then his eye caught the sun-visor, and the faded yellow sticky note which tapped to it, labeled “For Emergencies.” 

“Via versa necromica?” Kelly read in confusion. 

The car suddenly lit up with a sickening green light. With an unearthly howl, reminiscent of zombies rising from their graves, the car was lifted into the air, spun around right-side up, and slammed back into the ground with a roar. The Car’s gearshift immediately jacked into “climb” and it shot forward, slamming straight into the logging truck before it could fully get up to speed. Powerful geomantic magics engaged, anchoring the car to its place on the earth and turning the slippery mud beneath its tires into firm ground as hard as rock. The logging trucks wheels spun out, spraying mud everywhere, but the car slowly began pushing it back towards its inevitable doom. 

The crowd went nuts.

\---

Meanwhile, a large painted school bus, nicknamed “The Bus to Hell” got rammed by one of the remaining tractors, tearing off the entire front end and scattering what appeared to be sealing wards across half the arena. 

“Oh fuck,” the driver muttered and a sickly purple light began emanating from the smashed engine. He bailed out of the car and ran full tilt towards the safety of the barriers as two clawed hands began pulling their way out of the engine block, followed by a face filled with teeth and glowing yellow eyes, and a whole lot of fanged-lined tentacles. 

**“I’m free!”** The demon howled. **“Now I will have my revenge on those foolish enough to enslave me! I will peel their spine out through their stomach and devour their souls. I will GAAHHH!”**

The Car plowed straight into the demon without a seconds’ hesitation. Kelly’s screams took on a whole new pitch as the windshield was filled with fangs and glowing eyes. The demon howled in outrage, raking its fanged tentacles across The Car, and lunging for the windshield. 

But The Car’s wards had been built to protect against things far nastier than a minor demon. Its creators had certainly not believed in skimping when it came to that. Alcor the Dreambender might have been able to punch his way through those wards, but only because there was currently nothing left on this planet he couldn’t punch his way through. The demons claws and fangs raked futilely across the car’s sides, not even able to scratch the paint. 

The demon’s howls however, were quickly broken off as the car rammed it straight into one of the delivery vans with enough force to push the van aside. Not wasting a second, The Car continued on, sideswiping the forklift and raking the demon along its spike-lined sides and spraying purple blood everywhere. Then came the mobile church. 

Yes, the church wasn’t exactly in active use. But it hadn’t been deconsecrated when it had been bought for the demolition derby, and, it turned out, it could still be used to beat a minor demon back into incorporeality. 

\---

“Fucking shit,” George whispered in awe. “He’s going up against the War Rig now.”

“Even if he gets ripped to shreds, he’s still going to get second place.” Anders whispered.

“Assuming he survives getting ripped to shreds,” Janet muttered, wincing at another sharp scream came through the headset. “Goddamnit Kelly, stop screaming!!” 

\---

The shattered remains of the other contestants lay scattered across the arena. All the other drivers had been rushed to safety. All that was left was the War Rig, the massive fusion of a tank and a combine harvester, and The Car.

Practically everyone was leaning forward in anticipation. No one had imagined that battered car would have made it this far, not even Kelly. Bets were flying left and right. No one was sure who would actually win. People who had thought the War Rig a sure winner were suddenly feeling a little inkling of fearful doubt in their hearts. 

The Car and the War Rig circled each other. Like two predators sizing each other up. Puffs of black smoke were coming out of the car, though those watching had the distinct impression it was more a threat display than any sign of real damage. The War Rig spun its modified harvester, which had chewed up more than its share of vehicles, the chains attached to the bars raking the mud in front of it.

The Car’s headlights suddenly flashed a poison green, it let out a great howl and closed in for the kill. 

Spectators would later say that the whole scene resembled a starving wolf taking down a caribou. Slowly The Car had smashed the War Rig down to size, taking out the tires first to remove any hope of escape, before closing in and delivering the killing blow. 

Pieces of the War Rig were later found scattered as far away as the next county. The Car was in no worse shape than it had been when it first entered the arena.

“I’m alive.” Kelly whispered. “I won. I’m alive. I won.” A manic, hysterical laugh began to bubble up from inside him; borne out of a mixture of adrenaline, exhilaration, triumph, and the sheer relief of still being alive. 

He was still laughing when the Derby Organizers helped him out of The Car and presented him with the grand prize trophy and a check for ten thousand dollars. Unfortunately for Kelly’s reputation, he was still laughing like a deranged maniac on the local news the next night. Even forty years later, people still ran for cover whenever they saw him driving The Car down the street. 

\---

“Mom,” Kelly said, as he staggered into the house that night. “I have something to confess to you.”

“Oh?” His mom shut off the TV and turned to face him. “What?”

“I didn’t go with my friends to the movies tonight.”

His mom nodded. “I suspected as much. What, pray tell, did you do then?”

“I was in the demolition derby.”

Kelly’s mom frowned. “I don’t have any problem with you going to see the demolition derby with your friends. You didn’t need to lie to me…”

“No,” Kelly interrupted his mom. “I was in the demolition derby. I drove the car in the arena while two dozen people tried their hardest to smash us into scrap.” He smothered down another hysterical laugh. “I won first prize,” he placed the trophy on the table in front of his mom. “And ten grand.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was heavily debated by theologians, magic experts, and car enthusiasts as to whether or not The Car had a soul. It wasn’t an easy question to answer. For one, only a few people had managed to get close to the car without being run over. In addition, only demons and angles could really tell whether something had a soul, leaving the rest of the world the bicker over what constituted a souled being. It was not uncommon for debates to degenerate into fist-fights, hair-pulling, and name calling. 

The car was sentient, everyone could agree on that, but it wasn’t terribly intelligent. It had once been outsmarted by a border collie. No one had ever been able to submit the car to intelligence tests, so there was no consensus as to exactly how (un)intelligent it was. The Car had simply chased down the first, and only, person to ever try.

The question was further complicated by the obscured origins of The Car. It was very likely that Alcor was the only being left alive that knew how David and Sarah had turned their Car into a sentient monster through a mixture of apathy, frustration, no knowledge of cars, and way too much magic. This knowledge however, would have clarified nothing. 

The Car hadn’t had a soul when David and Sarah had first split their money to purchase it. It had just been a normal grey SUV. The first slapdash magical repair they performed on it did nothing to change that. Nor had the two thousand four hundred fifty-eight slapdash magical repairs that had followed. Even when the engine fell out, and David and Sarah replaced it with a magical totem made of obsidian, wood, and horse bones, it still remained a soulless and unintelligent vehicle. But, all this magic did help pave the way for the transition to sentience the car experienced. 

If you had to ask, it was the necromantic ritual David and Sarah performed, in an attempt to get the car to start, which gave the car its first spark of sentience. The ritual was supposed to bring life to the unliving, and it had an interesting effect on the car, which unlike the intended subjects of the ritual, had never been living in the first place. David and Sarah were largely unaware of this, content in the fact that the car had started when they had then turned the key. So much so that they repeated the ritual whenever the car refused to start, and their usual magical repairs didn’t cut it. Slowly, but surely a spark of sentience began to be nurtured in the car. 

David and Sarah drove that car for nearly seventy years, before the got the letter from the DMV saying that if they wanted to renew their licenses, they would have to do it over the dead bodies of the entire department. With the two of them being over ninety at the time, they had decided not to fight it. Since they didn’t want to inflict the car on anyone they actually liked, they instead left it on the side of the road with a sign saying “free” stuck in the windshield wipers. 

David and Sarah had never once even remotely clued into the idea that most cars only lasted twenty years at best. Nor had it ever occurred to them that all the magic they had pumped into that car over those seventy years might have had unintended consequences.

It should be noted however, that Officer Bernhauser was not terribly surprised to see David and Sarah’s car pass him on the street without anybody behind the wheel. 

\---

If David and Sarah getting seventy years of driving out of The Car was miraculous, then it paled in comparison to the hundreds of years it wandered the highways of earth. In that time the car had gone through countless owners, and its wards had soaked up enough damage to destroy all of America at least once. That, needless to say, took its toll on The Car. Slowly, but surely, it was worn down. Till really, it was nothing more than a pile of rust, rubber, and upholstery being held together by sheer willpower and a shit-ton of magic.

\---

The group of old men, sitting on plastic lawn-chairs outside of Greasy Greg’s Gas, Grub, and Grills, were the first to hear it. A loud tormented groan that sounded like a particularly decaying zombie on its last legs, followed shortly afterward by the unmistakable sound of police sirens. Then they saw it, a car speeding down the highway, with three police cruisers in hot pursuit. The car wasn’t in good shape, one wheel was loose and oily black smoke was billowing out of several bullet holes in its side. Nevermind the fact that the car already looked like it had the shit beaten out of it by a pack of kids with tire-irons. 

The car suddenly veered off the highway, taking out the Greasy Greg’s sign and narrowly missing a row of gas pumps and a giant propane tank, before crashing straight into a green SUV which had been parked outside the store.

The car exploded in a gigantic cloud of orange rust. Moldering horse bones, cracked pieces of obsidian, and bits of shredded plastic bounced off the storefront. A lone tire skipped across the parking lot and over a nearby embankment. Orange coated bystanders ran for cover, chocking and coughing on rust dust. The police cruisers skidded to a stop at the edge of the rust cloud, several officers even getting out of their cars with their hands on their guns. 

“Is it dead?” one woman whispered to her partner.

Then the green SUV suddenly let out an unearthly howl. Its headlights flashed a sickly, acid green. Before anyone could react, the green SUV rammed straight into one of the police cars, shoving it aside with a spray of sparks. Horse bones crunched under its tires as it burned rubber straight back onto the highway. 

The cops scrambled back into their cars, shouting and swearing, and took off in pursuit.

The cloud of rust slowly cleared to reveal the driver of the SUV, staring in stupefied shock at the empty parking space where his car had once been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who says cars can't reincarnate? Basically an idea born of a brainstorming session between me and ThisCat. Long story short, the car staves off death by possessing other vehicles. Future bodies include such forms as a golfcart, a limo, a military helicopter, a jumbo jet, and an interstellar pirate ship. (Anyone wants to take a shot at it, go nuts.)


End file.
